12th Noo.
Tr, as many people hope, there will be after the coming settlement is concluded, no bay, no gulf, no channel nor creek in China from which trading vessels may be excluded, we may be quite sure that some of the existing treaty ports will be very considerably affected, some favourably, some the reverse.
On the whole the story of the treaty orts has been an interesting story.
has marked step by step the advance of Western progressiveness as against Eastern conservatism. Canton was, so to speak, a treaty port before the days of treaties, that is to say, it had been occupied by foreign merchants long before the days of 1842, when it was under the Nanking treaty formally " opened," along with Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo, and Shanghai, the premier five. The whole gamut of human aspiration, success, and failure has been run through in these five alone. Of them all Shanghai only has constantly expanded. Canton is not what she once was—the port of China. Foochow has declined with her trade in tea. Amoy has always been of considerable importance. Ningpo by all foreigners except the shipowner is almost abandoned. Of the five additional ports opened in 1860, Taiwan is now Japanese, Newchwang is coveted by Russia, and the others Chefoo, Swatow, and Kiungchou have never been much more than one-horse places. Hankow, opened in 1861, ranks next
Yangtze Valley. Of late years there to Shanghai in inn portance in the have been a great many more openings, some promising, others doubtful value. At the moment there are under forty open ports all told, including sea and river ports. But when' it is remembered that China rivals in size the greater part of the European continent, that her coastline is a fretwork of river mouths and indentations, that she has navigable streams aggregating thousands of miles, and that her harbours are many in number and fair in quality, forty open ports is not a great number. Neither are all these well placed. Jealousies have prevented the opening of some of the most suitable. sites, and allowed that of others, where failure was a practical certainty. It is to be expected therefore that when the terms of the looked-for treaty come into operation, some of these latter will suffer the consequences of their natural disability and possibly be abandoned altogether, whereas others not yet open will by reaping the benefit of position or enterprise rise rapidly to great importance.
Of late years the tendency of the European settlers has been towards separate concessions. We in Shanghai have worked rather with a view to concentration, and the success achieved north of the Yangkingpang only adds to the general regret that one jurisdiction does not. reign from the city to the suburbs all round. But in Tientsin, Hankow, and other newly opened places the tendency has been to separation. The British, French, German, and Japanese have each their plot of land at Tientsin, while at Hankow the same four are joined by Russia. By their treaty after the war, the Japanese likewise acquired strips at Newchwang, Hangchow, and Soochow.
It remains to be seen what will happen after the present crisis is past and gone. The declaration of the Powers that each shall seek no territorial compensation may have its effect on the concessions. There will be no object in covering the land with patches of parti-coloured flags if nothing further is to come of it. Half at least of the concessions of the past few years have been nothing more than the hasty grabs of political jealousy. If there is to be an international Monroe doctrine covering the whole of the eighteen provinces, some of the extensive garden plots now tricked out in national designs will share the fate of Goldsmith's " Deserted Village ©The very spot "Where many a time he trium-plied is forgot," will be the burden of the future song. There will be no need for international jealousy. When every port is open to all men, the selected spots hitherto favoured may be able to hold their own, or they may not. It will then, as we have said, be a matter for natural advantage and human enterprise to decide, Then again, it is probable that the construction of railways, which is certain to receive a great impetus from the establishment of a new order of things, will have much to do with the development of certain places as opposed to others. We have seen plenty of such cases in England, America, and other lands. A city without the iron road is fatally handicapped in the race for trade. wealth, and material well-being.
There is, however, a crumb of comfort even for the treaty port which has no chance of rivalling Shanghai or Hankow. An open China will be a commercial China. Trade will grow per saltus, and even such sleepy hollows as a few of the outports are now can hardly fail to feel the stimulus to some extent. end of the rds which resulted in We have apparently come to the
the alienation of Kiaochou, Port Arthur, Weihaiwei, and Kuangchouwan. The nations no longer "seek after leasing." Zones of influence still exist, but the self-denying ordinance is to become law, and then " what's mine is yours and what's yours is everybody's." A new chapter is to be opened in the history of foreign intercourse with China. The closing pages of the last are being written in letters of blood, with illustrations by fire and sword.' There have been bad old days in the Far East, bad for China, bad for foreigners. But on the other hand there has been much that was profitable, agreeable, and unique. No other country could show such colonies of outlanders living under such peculiar circumstances as those of the minor outports. It is much to be regretted that but fow, if any, of these places have ever developed an adequate historian. The charm, the freshness, the isolation of old outport days is gone never to return. The telegraph, the almost daily mail, and the all-too-frequent. globe-trotter have revolutionized everything. Billiards and boating, shooting and racing are now mere incidents in the regular round instead of being the main objects ofa life interspersed with a little barter and bargaining. What little is left of the old days will vanish at the shriek of the locomotive, and many an old resident, could he come back from that bourne to which all are bound, would hold up his hands in honour and cry: "Ichabod, Ichabod, the glory has departed."
The very name treaty port will gradually die out when all are open alike. Little by little China will be Westernised, especially in_ its business neighbourhoods, and though perhaps there will be much to make up for the loss, the old indescribable charm will soon have passed into the limbo of dumb forgetfulness.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.